The "more political thread" besides "Japan Earthquake: nuclear plants" scientific one

QuantumPion

Pripyat was a city of over 50,000 people, and the power plant was right in the middle of it. Furthermore, the population was not evacuated until a several days after the accident occurred. Yet still, the only immediate and confirmed deaths were the ~60 firefighters directly exposed. Try again (but please check the facts first next time).

clancy688

Pripyat was located 4 km northwest to the NPP. The evacuation happened at April 27th, one day after the disaster. Because of favourable winds, heavy contamination of Pripyat happened only after the evacuation was completed.

As for Bhopal, the population in a radius 1 km around the plant was 100.000.

Luca Bevil

Prypiat is at about 3 km from the chernobyl plant.

Moreover it is well known that acute effects begin at around 3 Sv absorbed over a short period.
This does not make a few hundred millisieverts absorbed over a few days less dangerous for substantially increased cancer and leukemia risk.

Try again (but please check the facts first next time).

QuantumPion

What is your point? That if Chernobyl was 3 km closer to the population center that 20,000 people would have died of radiation poisoning? Sorry, but that is just bologna. Allow me to quote my original comment so that the context is not forgotten:

clancy688

Nope. The contrary. Those 5000 people at Bhopal wouldn't have died if the plant was located a few km outside the city.

And bologna or not - radiation levels in Prypjat were reaching three-digit mSv/hr numbers by April 27th evening (the whole population was evacuated during noon). I leave it to your imagination what the first cloud (the one formed by the explosion which did MISS Pripyat) whould have done to the population of any city in its path.

http://www-ns.iaea.org/downloads/rw/...pyat-May06.pdf

QuantumPion

Ok. And No one would have had any radiation exposure at Chernobyl if they weren't conducting an unsafe experiment with an unsafe designed reactor. And the Fukushima accident would not have happened if the Tsunami flood wall was a few meters higher. What is your point? Mine is that there have been non-nuclear industrial accidents far worse than any nuclear accident. What is yours?

So you are saying the doses during the first release were not immediately hazardous, and the fallout cloud was narrow and localized. Thanks for proving my point.

clancy688

Let's see, we've had three large scale nuclear accidents so far. Mayak, Chernobyl and Fukushima. For all you could consider us being lucky since we encountered favourable winds. Maybe that won't happen with number four.
And how many "non-nuclear industrial accidents" have there been so far? Millions? I'm pretty sure that many of these accidents encountered "lucky" situations as shown above. As for Bhopal, that was probably an very "unlucky" situation. A third world country with no emergency procedures, a leaking chemical plant inside the slum of a city with over one million residents... of course there are horrendous fatalities.
At Seveso (in Italy) a similar accident happened. But only two people died. How many people would've died if the plant would have been at the same location as the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal?
You're picking practically the worst non-nuclear industrial accident ever out of millions of accidents, oppose it to the only three large scale nuclear accidents we had so far and keep telling "Look, nuclear accidents aren't so bad, are they?".
Nuclear Accidents SO FAR haven't been as bad as Bhopal. That's correct. But they have the potential to become, way, way worse. It just hasn't happened yet.


Yes and no. They were hazardous. The people were just lucky to be missed by the hazardous cloud. That's all.
You're basically saying "If an avalanche doesn't hit me, it's not dangerous."

robinson

Fukushima is the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and the seventh serious nuclear accidents. Lumping six huge reactor failures as one accident is ridiculous. The material in any one of the six reactors dwarfs the small amount at Chernobyl.

I put 5 and 6 together, but considering the amounts of radioactivity released from them (which are in no way known yet), they could be considered the 7th and 8th worse disasters.

There is no doubt they are useless as reactors, and still pose a huge threat of radioactivity.

While I understand why nuclear advocates would want to call it one disaster, it's disingenuous in the extreme.

QuantumPion

There have only been three large scale nuclear accidents. I'm comparing the worst non-nuclear industrial accident to the worst nuclear industrial accident. It would be kind of silly to compare to the worst non-nuclear industrial accident to a postulated worst-case doomsday scenario nuclear accident. I could come up with all sorts of doomsday scenarios in non-nuclear industries that have the potential to be far far worse. I mean, SO FAR wide-spread use of antibiotics has not lead to the development of genocidal super-bug, but theoretically it could. Does that mean we should cease use of all antibiotics, just in case?

QuantumPion

The reason why they are all lumped together is because the total radiation release by all of the Fukushima units combined is less than 5% of the Chernobyl accident (~200 PBq compared to >4000 for Chernobyl) and is primarily Iodine (Chernobyl released particulate core material). Hence why calling it as bad as Chernobyl is disingenuous in the extreme.

robinson

Nobody actually knows the amount of material released so far, especially into the ocean. As for the amount that is out of containment at this point, it's huge. Of course advocates want to say leaking material from water doesn't count, because somehow even though it is no longer inside a reactor (or fuel pond), it's still contained somehow.

The other factor, which advocates have hung onto for dear life, is that they want to say what is now is the complete disaster. Like no more material will escape, and nothing could possibly happen in the years to come. The disaster is years away from any semblance of safe, so it's ongoing.

Or rather six disasters are ongoing.

From my reading of nuclear advocates, even if all the core material, and spent fuel rods, even if all of it was released, they wouldn't change their stance that nuclear power is the safest power source ever.

Which is pure nonsense, but they have actually said this. Even if all the material leaks out, because evacuations and careful avoidance by workers would mean nobody died, they would trumpet that fact as if it means nuclear power is still safe. Which is of course, pure politics.

tsutsuji

Do you think Fukushima Daiichi unit 5 and 6 pose a bigger threat than neighboring Fukushima Daini Power Plant ? If so, why ?

Luca Bevil

I think this position is so disrepectful of the enormous suffering, increased cancers, additional deaths, eroic efforts carried out by first line workers, biorobots liquidators in Chernobyl that it does not deserve a stance in a civilised dialog.

Comparing an admittedly horrible chemical accident like the one in Bopal (in fact the worst chemical accident ever, for the abysmal safety management put in place there) that orrendously affecteded the local population, but only the local population, with Fukushima or worse Chernobyl is completely unacceptable on any scientific or ethic ground.

Chernobyl spewed radioactive substances that fell out in most of Europe.
300.000 people were forced to relocate and this mass evacuation notwithstanding the WHO estimates in more than 4.000 the additional deaths from cancer due to the accident.
Other about 4.000 additional thiroyd cancer cases have been recognised among children.
The fact that thyroid cancer is in a measure "treatable" (15 out of 4000 had died as of 2006 if I remember correctly) does not make their lives less ruined.
I am aunaware about how many additional deaths among them can be estimates as of today.

Needless to say the scientific value of the "Chernobyl Report" is highly debatable.
Health consequences of contamination outside the "worst contaminated areas" are completely disregarded where the same estimation techniques applied to the most contaminated areas would lead to other 4.000 expected deaths if all pplied as reasonable in all the remaining affected areas of Europe.
Moreover it is common experience of any voluntary visiting Ukraine or Bielarus that the empirical real feedback from children hospitals is far from serious than the data published in that highly debatable report for both cancer cases and genetic abnormalities.
I kind of suspect QuantumPion is not among such people though.

Greenpeace has published far different estimates about Chernobyl toll, getting up to something about 80.000 additional deaths.
While this estimate may in turn be debated it cannot be debated that even taking such numbers with outmost skepticism Chernobyl makes Bopal pale in comparison.

Fukushima was officially estimated INES7 and as of April the 6th at about 10% of airborne emission compared to Chernobyl.
CS 137 discharge in water is (as of today) already in the Chernobyl order of magnitude, as it has been quickly estimated from official data in the other 3d, and the actual effectiveness of purification of such a contaminated mass of water has still to be proven by the AREVA processing plant.

Moreover Fukushima had in fact a worst case scenario (let's say in case of SFP4 collapsing to state just an example that worried not only me but Gregory Jazco head of the US NRC) much worse than Chernobyl itself.
Likelihood of such a scenario has substantially decreased but the situation is far from being stable at almost 3 months past the accident.

In this light meaning no disprespect to the lives taht were lost in BOPAL, also Fukushima worried and worries me much more than Bopal.

As an example back in 1986 in my home town in southern Italy 2000 km away from the plant had to exercise outmost care in minimising my own exposure from briething and eating (QuantumPrion may not care but back then I rather minimise my chanches of getting a solid cancer or conceive genetically ill children).

Danuta

Actually, see, the really disturbing part is that nobody in the Soviet nuclear industry, at the time, thought the reactor at Chernobyl was of an unsafe design and nobody in the Japanese nuclear industry thought the geezer reactors at Fukushima were of an unsafe design either before their respective accidents. Otherwise they wouldn't have built these things the way they did, or extended their livespan, right?(heh) The experiment at Chernobyl was to test a potential safety emergency core cooling feature and nobody, but nobody, working at the reactor thought this was going to end up causing any kind of accident involving loss of control.

That's just the way some accidents happen -- you think everything is going great until BLAM, stupid arrogant assumptions are blown to bits. The brilliant reactor design "suddenly" becomes incredibly unsafe, the thorough risk assessment "suddenly" becomes woefully inaccurate and fit only to be flushed down the toilet and the highly intelligent, competent and responsible dudes running these things, okay maybe "not so suddenly", become greedy corner cutting and/or mismanaging criminals. Then hindsight, and in the case of Fuku, endless foresight, become much talked about by the industry in order to pacify the masses. Not to forget spin doctoring, obfuscation and release of inaccurate data.

Oh dear.

zapperzero

It does get quite tiresome, especially the second time around. I am a Chernobyl downwinder, you see, just like most of Europe. Unlike most of Europe, I was living in one of those places where it got bad enough that iodine pills were distributed. The populace was told to distill water for drinking/cooking and then store it for a week or so... Drink bottled water in the meantime, they said.

So I tend to do this weird schadenfreude chuckle when nuclear shills like QuantumPion do their little song and dance. Keep it up, lil' buddies. Soon enough, it will be YOUR kids lining up terrified in a school yard to get foul-tasting little yellow pills. You'll even get to try and explain what they're for, when they come home. That is, unless saner minds than yours prevail.

robinson

Let's try and avoid the oh so human desire to insult our opponents.

Which must be hard if you have ever suffered from radioactive fallout.

Danuta

Hey, and you know what I find personally insulting? Nuclear industry illogical happyspeak bullcrap.